The Trump administration will make available an additional 15,000 H-2B visas, meant for temporary non-agricultural workers, for this fiscal year, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Friday.
The U.S. government had already issued 66,000 such visas this year, but businesses had complained that they had not received enough visas to operate, particularly during the busy summer tourist season, and were on the verge of shutting down.
"The limitations on H-2B visas were originally meant to protect American workers, but when we enter a situation where the program unintentionally harms American businesses it needs to be reformed," DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in the statement.